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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28628913">Panacea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460'>hippocrates460</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Explicit Sex, Here be, Imprisonment, Liters of lube (homebrewed), M/M, No On-Screen Violence, Recovery from trauma, References to Torture, Rituals, Sex Magic, Strap on your seatbelts for these warnings, Subdrop, Yes on-screen boning, mentions of torture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:08:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,250</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28628913</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Potter is determined, Granger is resigned, the various Weasleys were either not informed or are missing for some other reason. It turns out that Dedalius Diggle is the Wizarding World’s foremost expert on sex magic, which makes Snape shiver.<br/>“Think of it this way,” Potter says when he notices, his eyes shining, his mouth in a little sideways twist as if they’re sharing an inside joke. “It could have been Malfoy.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Potter/Severus Snape</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>202</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>House of Snarry's Snape Birthday Bash!</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaesMora/gifts">MaesMora</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Maes, who is a superstar and a fantastic friend. Happy Snape's birthday to you honey, hope it's a good one &lt;3</p><p>(3 chapters and an epilogue, written on trains and at night because some stories need telling and still deadlines don't wait)</p><p>Thank you, as always, to Lilian - I'd do nothing if it weren't for you<br/>Thank you Light and Bleed for being the salt to my tequila shots (?) I love you and I love how you fight for joy and fandom when nothing's right in the world. You're amazing</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It has been dark for longer than Snape can count, and he’s been in too much pain for too long. Counting is out of the question. He knows that he is not dead, but hopes sometimes that he will be soon – surely hell cannot be worse than this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows that he can’t move, but tries anyway, his toes, his hands. He listens very carefully but there seems to be no one around. Whispers – or thinks very loudly, it’s hard to tell, </span>
  <em>
    <span>lumos</span>
  </em>
  <span> and watches his fingertips light up from the edge of his vision. He can’t quite tell if it’s better or worse to be able to see the ceiling above him, but his magic glows in his veins and that brings comfort.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Nox</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thinks when he hears something outside, and it was just on time, because the door bangs open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Malfoy!” someone hollers, an unfamiliar voice. “Malfoy get your sorry ass over here right this instant!”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The trial is worse than Snape had expected – and Snape has never been an optimist. His students, the people he used to teach, have aged at least five years since he last saw them, and he doesn’t dare look at the mirror in his holding cell for fear of what he might find. He finds his hearing is either going or maybe it has been gone a while and he never noticed. There’s a persistent ringing on the left side when there’s loud noises. He can’t read as well as he used to, the letters seem to move away from him, and he knows from where he was forced to look at himself during his ten minutes in the showers before his trial that he is dangerously thin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Throughout the entire trial he is forced to sit in a (comfortable – what an improvement) chair right opposite Potter. The last of all Potters. Who looks at him with hollow-eyed horror. It’s a cruelty Snape hadn’t expected to face, a cruelty the people that put him here won’t know to be one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t quite register that he is to go to prison, after all he faced while trapped in a basement for half a decade, until Potters face twists with some strong emotion. He thinks about that and not much else for the two years that follow.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Azkaban was never recovered from the Death Eaters – or so the story goes. Granger never managed to get over the smug sort of terror she exudes when she’s getting away with a lie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Either way he is placed in a Muggle prison, without his wand but with a small bathroom. He gets food every day, and a Healer helps him recover most of his hearing - and all of his eyesight once they realise he needs reading glasses.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Snape reads, letters that his old colleagues and students send, the papers, the sort of books you find in a men’s prison – </span>
  <em>
    <span>Motorcycle maintenance</span>
  </em>
  <span>, </span>
  <em>
    <span>How to make friends and win people,</span>
  </em>
  <span> an alarming stack of books on a range of topics labelled </span>
  <em>
    <span>For Dummies</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes one friend, Isabelle, who is as enraged as Snape is to be trapped in a Muggle men’s prison, albeit for different reasons. She, like him, is the sort to need a long stare at the ceiling to stop herself from shouting when people are being supremely stupid, so they get along from day one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he tells Isabelle he’s being considered for house arrest but isn’t sure if he wants that, she rolls her eyes, looks up at the ceiling, and breathes in and out a bit loudly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wouldn’t even know where,” Snape complains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does it not state an address?” It does. “What the hell, Crickhowell?” It takes Isabelle 45 minutes and swearwords Snape hasn’t heard since he snuck into the pub with his dad at 9, but she manages to get a name to go with the address from the prison library computer. “Harry Potter,” she says. “Does that sound familiar? Wait – his name is on the letter how come you – ”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Harry Potter</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Snape thinks, and the unthinkable happens. He starts crying. It shocks Isabelle even more than it shocks him but as these things go, once he starts he finds he can’t stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle takes his hand, guides him to his cell, sits him down on the narrow hard bed, takes off his prison-issued shoes, and hisses when a guard comes to tell them it’s 20 minutes until she needs to be in her own cell. Carlsson, he’s one of the alright ones, sees what she’s dealing with and backs away slowly. It makes Snape laugh even as he cries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cries himself to sleep and wakes up foggy and achy but determined. There must be something Potter wants from him. Snape covers his head with the blankets and whispers </span>
  <em>
    <span>lumos</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The light at the end of his index finger brings him comfort and although there’s cameras everywhere here and to do magic would be to break the Statute, he still has magic. This is still his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle doesn’t ask questions, but she listens when he tells her what he can. And she cries when he leaves. Helps him steal </span>
  <em>
    <span>How to make friends and win people </span>
  </em>
  <span>because after all what are they going to do? They’re already in prison.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Potter’s cottage in </span>
  <em>
    <span>Crickhowell</span>
  </em>
  <span> is ancient. Old enough that the doorposts are a bit low for Severus. He’s still imprisoned even though he is not </span>
  <em>
    <span>in</span>
  </em>
  <span> prison, so no wand, and no going beyond the wards. Luckily (luckily?) Potter is the sort of wizard that warded not just the house but also the entirety of the land that comes with it. At the very least this means that Snape can go outside whenever he wants, rather than from 11:15 to 11:25 during winter and 13:05 to 14:05 during summer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a bathroom just over here,” Potter says, nervous enough that it’s making Snape feel a bit better about the whole situation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Indeed,” Snape answers, because there isn’t much else to say. Only half the house is inhabitable, the rest is exposed floors, exposed pipes and wiring, and in one place on the second floor, just a hole in the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be – I’ll be working on the rest of course,” he squeaks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape resists the urge to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>indeed </span>
  </em>
  <span>again. “Is that why I’m here?” he drawls instead. “To perform manual labour without the use of magic?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To his surprise Potter blushes but doesn’t stammer his way through a pathetic denial. “It’d be a fitting payback for all the cauldrons you made me scrub,” he says instead, making the brave kind of eye contact his mother was known for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good to know that some things never change,” Snape mumbles, more to himself than to Potter. He’d like to make use of the one bathroom that has both a floor and a ceiling, he hasn’t had a bath in – in actual ages.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>It takes about a week for Snape to recover from the trip, much as it was only a bit of a walk, a short Floo trip, and a perfectly expert Apparition. They’d gone from the office at the prison to the Ministry, signed paperwork in both places, and then Apparated to Wales. Still Snape’s whole body aches, his balance is off, and his head pounds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he takes a cup of coffee he’s made himself to the kitchen door and looks out over the garden he tries to convince himself that this is better than another year in prison.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Potter is everywhere, though. He is not just around, he hovers. He insists on bringing meals to Snape during those first few days when walking is hard and the stairs are impossible. Snape spends most of his time in the room that Potter had pointed him to. It has a view of the road, the vastness beyond. A small desk, a comfortable bed, a dresser that Snape puts all of his things on because he doesn’t have enough to put inside of it.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“Is there any way I could send a letter from here?” Snape asks when he’s written the letter, put it in an envelope, and spent a day or two trying to think of how he’d pay for a stamp without being allowed to go to Gringotts to find out whether he still has money at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“’Course,” Potter says. “I’m going to the shops tomorrow, I can take it then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How will I pay for it?” Snape asks, trying to sit up straight like his mum’d taught him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t ask for money unless you know what you need it for</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Letters feel like a luxury but he hates to leave isabelle without word.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Potter blinks stupidly. “I can...” he trails of as he looks at Snape, seeming to realise for the very first time that Snape has been wearing these seem trousers for the entirety of his stay in Wales. “I’ll ask Hermione.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Granger can be reached by owl post, so her reply comes that very same day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was declared dead and they gave away all my money,” Snape says when he sees the way Potter’s face returns to hollow horror as he reads.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Potter looks up at him, shakes something loose. “You’re in debt because of the reparations,” he says. “But we’re going to contest that, it cannot – this has to end.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which is how Potters house ends up filled with Weasleys and Granger and for some reason Grangers filthy Kneazle. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Half-Kneazle</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the littlest Weasley corrects. She’s only a child but has the earnestness of all the Weasleys. “Indeed,” Snape hears himself say.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a three-day argument around the kitchen table and by the end of all that, Snape takes Potter aside. “What about my letter?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll post it,” Granger offers, holding her hand out like Snape doesn’t need to walk up the stairs, get it from his room and walk back down the stairs again. Out of spite and also as a way to remind her of his wandlessness, he says </span>
  <em>
    <span>Accio letter</span>
  </em>
  <span> out loud. It works, which is fortunate for his ability to do magic even with his wand locked away at the Ministry, and unfortunate for the fact he’ll have to hide his own surprise at being able to do not just first-year magic like this.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Potter ends up sending everyone but Granger away, and Granger disappears upstairs only to come back down wearing some borrowed pyjamas, with her hair piled up. Snape refuses to consider if they are </span>
  <em>
    <span>together</span>
  </em>
  <span>, or worse, </span>
  <em>
    <span>lovers</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He shan’t even think it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What else do you need?” Granger asks, with a clean sheet of parchment in front of her, and Snape doesn’t manage to suppress the urge to look at Potter. He doesn’t know what for – why would Potter know what he needs? It’s all made infinitely worse by the fact that Potter and Granger turn to look at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape tries to salvage the whole thing with an impatient huff, and it probably doesn’t work but it’ll have to do. “I had a Healer come to the prison every Tuesday,” he says. “I worked in the kitchens most mornings after she declared me well enough to do so.” He doesn’t want to sound like he needs something to do, but it’s the truth. “There was laundry services.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve a machine in the basement,” Potter says, colour high on his cheeks. Snape doesn’t know whether the embarrassment is for not having told Snape this, or for having a laundry machine rather than a laundry cauldron. Granger tuts and Potter mumbles something machines being convenient. Perhaps it’s both.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Granger hands him an M&amp;S catalogue and asks him to pick anything he needs, shrugs when he frowns at her. “Robes take longer to order.”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>They argue about what sort of things Snape can help with, and in the end Snape just finds his own things to do. He spends a day or two weeding in Potter’s garden, throwing some moldy bulbs down because at least this way they have a fighting chance. Maybe he’ll take a chance on the box of poorly labelled seeds when the frost has passed. Then it starts snowing in earnest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Potter’s hovering makes Snape more nervous than he has ever been about cooking, so that option is abandoned after two truly embarrassing shouting matches. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape can’t paint walls, he can’t lift anything that’s too heavy, and in the end he starts on alphabetising Potter's library. Dull as dirt, but it allows him to listen to the Wizarding Wireless as he goes, and he has missed the Wizarding Wireless.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His Healer can’t come to Wales, which is a disappointment but Snape’s had many of those in his life. What’s far worse is that the </span>
  <em>
    <span>child </span>
  </em>
  <span>the </span>
  <em>
    <span>diaper-wearing infant</span>
  </em>
  <span> that comes as a replacement asks to be referred to as </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dennis</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” says Snape. Because the limit has to be somewhere and it isn’t here but that’s only because it was passed a good long while ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr Snape,” the boy squeaks. “I assure you that I am the foremost expert on healing from Magical torture in Magical Britain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What on earth would Muggle Britain need an expert on Magical torture for,” Snape bristles. But it doesn’t win him the argument.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Potter still hovers, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dennis</span>
  </em>
  <span> comes on Thursdays because his Tuesdays are already full, probably with day care or primary school or something. “Wait, </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Granger asks. It’s been a very long three weeks and Snape is very tired of being questioned like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Snape says, impatiently. “She’ll be waiting for my reply I’d appreciate it if you could put this letter in the mailbox for me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can see her think and wants none of it until something clever and devious happens to her face. “How does it work with receiving visitors.”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Isabelle </span>
  <em>
    <span>adores</span>
  </em>
  <span> Granger, and not just because Granger heavily implies being willing to break absolutely any law for what she considers to be the right thing to do. Snape can’t help but be proud of how she’s grown as a person.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just like that they settle into a rhythm. Snape was spared the embarrassment of spending Halloween with Potter by arriving in December, but that means that he’s forced to watch Potter struggle his way through apologizing for leaving him alone with Christmas, and then again with New Years. Both times Potter returns drunk and maudlin and earlier than expected.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“What would you like to do tomorrow?” Potter asks him as they’re having an awkward dinner one night in January.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a Thursday,” Snape answers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dennis</span>
  </em>
  <span> comes on Thursdays.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And it’s your birthday,” Potter says it gently and Snape suddenly hates him. He knows better than to argue after the time he got dizzy from yelling and ended up on the floor with his feet on a chair and a worried hovering Potter. He can’t really leave, but he can walk away from this conversation just the same. He doesn’t pause on the stairs and regrets it when he feels sick and shivery by the time he gets to his room, but he manages to close the door before collapsing onto the carpet. It’s the homiest carpet Snape’s ever seen, and it makes him even more nauseous to look at when he’s face down on it. It looks hand-woven by a troll. It smells like love and family.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>On his 46</span>
  <span>th</span>
  <span> birthday, Severus Snape gets the good news that he’s been cursed. “I’ve suspected it from the beginning,” the baby-faced Healer squeaks, with barely contained excitement that Snape finds a bit on the nose, so to speak. “You were just so weak!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Potter,” Snape growls, because he needs to get a second adult in here and if he’s 46 that means Potter has been allowed to vote for a while. Potter was hovering so he bursts in through the door. “Get me out of here,” Snape demands, and Potter does. Snape fumes in the sunchair by the kitchen door, with a blanket on his lap and one of Potter’s chickens bok-bokking at him. It’s Granger that comes to fetch him, an hour or so later, and she has the good sense to bring tea.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>They bring in a Weasley, because Potter has never been able to resist that urge, but at least it’s one of the smart ones. They also bring in Minerva, who is so obviously glad to see Snape that Snape becomes glad to see her, and then he has to hold all that emotion where no one can see it as they argue about ways to break a curse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They bring in some of the students that Snape used to teach, the ones whose parents are suspected to have been involved in the casting of this curse, and all of them stare at Snape in his M&amp;S Muggle clothes. He aches with it, no matter what </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dennis</span>
  </em>
  <span> might say about the curse being what is causing him all this pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end it’s a Black, pig-nosed and snotty in her painting, that delivers the news. “Well it sounds like it’s from the Carling Grimoire. Which means the counter is in there too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some anonymous benefactor that Granger and Potter refer to as not-Draco with a smirk every time they speak of them donates one of the only known complete copies of the Carling Grimoire, and Snape insists on reading it himself.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Caligonus Unbletsung feeds on the victim’s magic. Every time they cast a spell the curse strengthens its hold on the victim, eventually bleeding them dry of all energy. Most victims do not survive past three months, though once the cause of the symptoms (aches, bleeding gums, fatigue, green to orange earlobes) is discovered life can be prolonged by refraining from using magic.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Carling is famous for having created this curse and dying from it, after his eldest daughter cast it on him. Once he realised he had been thus cursed he attempted to split the earth so it might swallow him, and in doing so he expanded so much of his magic that he died. See page 394 for the counter curse.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape flips the pages, reads the title, and slams the book shut. He makes himself tea in Potter’s kitchen, and walks all the way up the stairs, and then up the little ladder, to the half-done attic. He takes plenty of rest between steps because he intends to get to the roof, and he makes it there without even one dizzy spell. From the rooftop he can see the way his breath fogs, the way the night is creeping across the snow-covered hills around Potter’s cottage despite it being only four in the afternoon. The tea keeps his hands warm, and he bites his lip as he shivers through his grief.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Page 394</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Sex magic</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <b>
    
  </b>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Much as a bezoar is effective against most Magical Ailments, sex magic is effective against most curses. While best sealed with a true love’s kiss, it may still be equally effective when following the below steps carefully.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p> </p><ul>
<li><em><span>On the night of an eclipse or solstice, prepare your location by sealing all entrances and exits, preferably with Madam Boogus’ Super Sealant</span></em></li>
</ul><ul>
<li><span>Prepare the All-Purpose Lubricant as described on page 153.</span></li>
</ul><ul>
<li><span>Set out the crystals and personal items as indicated by the diagram below</span></li>
</ul><ul>
<li><span>Cover all participants in All-Purpose Lubricant</span></li>
</ul><ul>
<li><span>Stay hydrated</span></li>
</ul><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Some additional advice, specifically for novices. Choose your crystals and personal items with care, as they will affect the ritual’s efficacy. Sex magic is not particularly complicated, but it requires at least two participants that are willing to stay in the same location for the duration of the ritual.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Familiarise yourself with the rubric on page 238, ‘What to do in case a ritual goes entirely tits up’ in advance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Potter enters his room for the very first time since he’d helped carry Snape’s (mostly empty) bag up when Snape’d first arrived. He is pale but the way his mouth is set spells trouble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll do it,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>And that’s when it really begins.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Potter is determined, Granger is resigned, the various Weasleys were either not informed or are missing for some other reason. It turns out that Dedalius Diggle is the Wizarding World’s foremost expert on sexmagic, which makes Snape shiver.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Think of it this way,” Potter says when he notices, his eyes shining, his mouth in a little sideways twist as if they’re sharing an inside joke. “It could have been Malfoy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape nearly laughs at that. Has to really work to keep it all inside. Potter acts as if he noticed, a little smug with it.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll take it to her,” Granger offers, when Snape hands her a letter for Isabelle. She sounds strangely eager.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Granger,” he says, unable to keep the </span>
  <em>
    <span>scandalised</span>
  </em>
  <span> out of his voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She levels him with a look, and when did this little lion start being able to do that? “Stones, Snape. And glass houses.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She snatches the letter from him and disappears. Potter is laughing but stops when Snape turns around to turn up an eyebrow at him. “Was she wearing perfume?”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span> “Diggle,” says Snape. Potter is asleep on the sofa and he needs some answers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it?” Diggle looks as exhausted as Snape feels, but they don’t have the foggiest where to start with the collection of crystals and personal items, specifically because Snape owns next to nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How long does such a ritual usually take? How bad is it likely to get?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It takes however long it needs to,” Diggle says. “Hours at least.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape nods. “And the rest? The very worst thing that could happen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The magic could kill you,” Diggle says. Low and serious, the fire reflecting off his glasses. “Potter is unlikely to get seriously injured, but if it kills you that will harm him, for the duration of the ritual you are bound.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Snape tries to convince Potter to call it off, again, and doesn’t succeed. Again. He wants to live, and Potter knows it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As always it is for some reason pretty sunny on Lily’s birthday. It has no right to be, it’s January as much as it was when it snowed the whole day on Snape’s birthday. Potter finangles something called ‘emotional leave’ for him and tries to explain the prison system to Snape as they walk down the garden path of Potter’s house to the road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Potter you forget I currently am </span>
  <em>
    <span>in </span>
  </em>
  <span>prison,” Snape sighs, and he doesn’t like the look on Potter’s face when they Apparate. They arrive somewhere noisy, and for a second Snape things they just broke the Statute while on a possibly-illegal trip out the house he’s supposed to be arrested at. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he realises it’s the river. Not just a river. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The</span>
  </em>
  <span> river.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” he sighs. They walk along it and then over to the park he used to play in. Everything looks different, but then it’s been a very long time since he was last in Cokeworth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You used to live down that way, right?” Potter asks, as if he hadn’t been an Auror up until the very day Snape was sentenced. “But what about my mum?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That one is a real question and it stops Snape in his tracks, slow going as they are. “We’ll go there, check something for me first, will you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He directs Potter to the tree that has grown in a way Snape can’t quite process, and then watches him try and climb it for a while before he realises he’s being laughed at and uses magic like an adult. “Oh there’s a box here!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Potter floats down with the box, light as a feather, gentle as a mouse, as if he once was one of the children that discovered the magic that had always been theirs right underneath this tree. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They walk to the old Evans house together, and Snape tells Potter of the box, Lily’s grandma’s box, carved by her grandfather Harry when they’d been about to get married. It holds the sad remains of some of the letters they’d left each other where Petunia wouldn’t be able to find them. Some pretty stones, a pencil, a rusty thimble.   </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Snape spends most of February on his knees in Potter’s garden. When he’s not arguing with Potter or his friends, or staring at the ceiling of Potter’s spare bedroom, he plants bulbs. Hundreds of them. They’ll bloom in summer when he might not be here to see it, but it keeps his hands busy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When the snow melts and a single snowdrop pushes its way through the last bits of icy mud-stained snow, Snape nearly breaks the mug he’s been holding. He feels his eyes heat and swallows it down, stares intently at the single flower that managed to bloom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh your gardening is paying off already,” Potter remarks, and Snape finds he wants him to know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t order snowdrops with you,” he says, looking at the way Potter reacts to his serious tone. He sways in, stills his usually ceaseless fidgeting. “This is one of the ones I planted when I’d only just arrived.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Those ratty old cobweb - ” he must see it on Snape’s face for Potter cuts himself off. Then he brightens. “That’s one of yours then, for the rituals.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And </span>
  <em>
    <span>no</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “No.” Snape shakes his head. No, no, no. “No bulbs have to stay in the ground, it’ll be dead by the solstice, we could dig them up and dry them so they have a better chance of success but Potter these plants are alive we cannot…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The look on Potter’s face tells him what he’s just done. It’s all soft and fond and terribly painful. Snape leaves for the library.</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span> ***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I just don’t understand what’s wrong with how I minced them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can tell,” Snape snaps back. But then he looks at the ceiling and forces himself to breathe in and out. “It’s to do with how it absorbs the dandelion root’s properties Potter. We’ll need the juices to not have mixed yet, that’s why it had to be done on a clean cutting board. Your mince is fine, it’s the cutting board that isn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Potter says, still frowning. “I’ll start over. Why aren’t we just buying this stuff either way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Madam Boogus went out of business in 1822, Potter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Potter sighs, desperately annoyed, and it causes one of the feathers he’d set aside earlier to lift off. Snape pushes it back down, using his magic, and Potter’s eyes blaze at him. “You’re not to use magic, that’s what I’m doing all of this for!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape holds up his hands. He steps back. Lets Potter mince in peace. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Much as Potter complains about Snape’s progress with finding personal items, he’s not really going anywhere either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean you have nothing?” Snape barks when Potter returns from a whole weekend at Hogwarts to ‘look for something that feels right’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just don’t,” he shrugs, doesn’t make eye contact, and Snape would drown him if he had half the strength he’d need. He’s panting with the effort of not blowing up at Potter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That night Snape is sitting by the fire, reading a book full of fascinating potions he’ll probably never get to make, when Potter joins him in the library. He sits down opposite Snape and clears his throat no less than three times. Snape pretends to keep reading.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did bring something from Hogwarts,” Potter confesses in the end. “And before you tell me it’s a bad idea, I just talked to Diggle and he thinks it’s a great idea.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape looks up. In Potter’s outstretched hand lies the ring, the ring with the stone that held the curse that killed Albus. He stands up and walks out. Sits in the bathroom on the edge of the tub for ages thinking he might throw up, and realises when he gets bored of waiting for it to come that he took the book with him. He goes straight to bed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We can just buy lube, no?” Potter asks, but his tone makes it clear that he knows the answer. “I just feel like maybe there’s been a lot of advances over the years in how lube is made and we could give it a go with something nice and strawberry-flavored.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll rather not take my advice from someone that cannot manage to find a floor for his poncy house,” Snape says, setting out the ingredients for Potter. “That’s mince for these, and slice for those. Do the aloe first, it’s the only thing that can’t be mixed before it’s added, and it’ll keep just fine if we set it apart for now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because it’s Potter and his absurd luck, and Snape and his rotten whatever-you-call-it, it all pulls together just on time. The crystals were easy, Snape has had a set of casting crystals since he was a teenager and it was among the things that Minerva managed to salvage when his rooms had been taken apart. It had been a gift from Regulus, actually, now that he thinks about it. But he shouldn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They manage to brew the lube and sealant, they have the bulb, half-dried and full of potential life waiting to be tucked back into the dirt. They have the box, the ring, a gross old sock, the replica sword of Gryffindor, the dragonhide boots Potter had given Snape for his birthday, right before the curse news ruined the day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Potter tells everyone that he’ll be on a meditation retreat and that Snape isn’t allowed to answer the door or open the mail without his permission, and apparently that works. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They think he’s unhinged,” Granger whispers at him, when she sees the face Snape was trying not to make. Snape looks at Potter hand-feeding his chickens poncy granola and she laughs. “Alright maybe he is.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>At midnight on the night of the solstice Potter and Snape start with the sealant. They’ve chosen the attic because Diggle warned them it could get messy, and Potter managed to finish the floor for the occasion. Granger gave them a little bag with ‘provisions’ whatever that might mean, and painting the walls, the sloping ceiling, the wooden floor, takes all night. They look out over the hills outside together, the sun just starting to show, while they rest and eat some of the packed sandwiches that were in the bag. Excellent thinking on Granger’s part, although Snape will never tell her of course.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“It’s really going to be spring,” Potter says, and it’s maudlin but it’s what Snape was thinking too, and he suddenly feels the hope that he might get to see it land in his stomach, heavy like a stone. It nearly knocks him over, the sudden and furious want to see flowers blooming, trees regaining leaves, lambs, and birds, and sunshine. Potter steadies him as if he doesn’t even need to think about it, grabbing his elbow gently. It helps and Snape hates him. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Are you sure I can’t help you?” Potter asks when Snape kneels down to breathe in and out for the fifth time in as many minutes.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Yes,” Snape snaps. “You know as well as I do why it has to be me.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter sits back down, radiating misery, and Snape continues drawing the diagram. Outside lines first, as in Arithmancy, he lets the ash slip through his fist one handful at a time. Potter hands him the crystals and items one by one, and he lays them out on the floor, then finishes the last bit of the ash and the last bit of the diagram at the same time. It clicks into place in a deeply satisfying way, the lines don’t change so much as correct themselves, and he can tell from Potter’s face that he felt it too.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“That was a lot of magic,” Potter whispers, looking at Snape’s ear. He doesn’t want to know, shakes his hair so that his ears are hidden.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>And that means it’s time. Snape checks out the window, it looks to be noon, and starts with the buttons on his cuffs. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter takes a while to catch on, but when he does he blushes fiercely, and undresses way too fast. Snape refuses to rush, folds his clothes as he takes them off, and Potter fidgets, then folds his clothes, and tries to carry them out of the innermost circle of the diagram Snape drew on the floor. “It doesn’t let me pass,” he says, and Snape hadn’t expected that, but he’s also not surprised.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Good thing we have the provisions in here with us,” he says instead, and he watches Potter feel around inside the bag and emerge with one of the phials marked ‘Lube’. He starts by pouring some over his head, then sets phial and stopper down to spread it around his face, his shoulders, his arms.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape pushes his clothes into the bag too, and finds another phial, pours it into his hands and starts with his arms. He’s not as ill-looking as he was when he’d just been sentenced, but he looks old and sickly, his skin colour always a little off. The Mark has mostly faded but never fails to look stark against his pale underarm. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter laughs when he almost slips in the lube that is dripping down from his hair, and Snape gets pulled out of his head and into the sex magic ritual. This is step four, the only other step listed is to stay hydrated. Diggle had said they’d know what to do, to follow their instincts, but Snape has limited experience with that and much as he’d like to say that Gryffindors do nothing else, he’s spent too much time with Potter these last months to really believe that. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Can you do my back?” Potter asks eventually, and he kneels in front of Snape who had to sit down to do his legs. Potter’s back is strong, and his skin is warm, but he shivers when Snape touches him.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Are my hands cold?” Snape asks, pulling away from Potter a little to rub his hands warm.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“No, no, go ahead,” Potter insists, but he shivers just the same. “I’ll tell you if I need you to stop.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Also if you want me to stop,” Snape tells him, while Potter continues to jerk away from his touch as if Snape is hurting him. “Or if you’d just like a break.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>He holds still until Potter nods, then swoops his hands up to check Potter’s neck, his scalp, his sides. “Did you do the soles of your feet?” </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“I did.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“And your - your groin?” Merlin he can’t even say it. Potter twists around to look at him, his glasses have slid down a little, his cheeks are darker than they usually are. He nods. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape lets Potter help him with his back, and his neck and left shoulder because he isn’t all that flexible with his right arm since the scarring on his neck didn’t get a chance to heal. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter tucks his glasses away, leaves the phials of lube standing next to the little bag, and before Snape knows it he is sitting opposite Potter, cross-legged, naked as the day he was born. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Is the magic… you know, telling you anything?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape shakes his head. Most of what he can hear is his tinnitus and the urge to cover up overrides anything else he might be noticing. He has no idea where to begin, it hardly seems appropriate to be <em>kissing</em> at a time like this, and he’s not about to - </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Maybe we can start by touching ourselves,” Potter suggests. It’s a barking idea, of course, but Snape swallows down his ire because he knows he doesn’t have any other suggestions. He nods and Potter opens his legs a little, starts fondling his cock.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Despite the heat rising in his cheeks, Snape tells himself to get on with it, and he does the same. It works surprisingly well. It’s not usually warm in the attic, but the lube has him feeling comfortably prickly all over. He tries to close his eyes and think of something objectively arousing, like the Westerns he used to watch, knees pulled up to his chin, after dinner at the Evans’. Rock Hudson in a uniform, Burt Reynolds not in a uniform. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>He can’t help but look at Potter, however. The way he is visibly getting hard, the way his body responds to what his hands are doing. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape can’t quite bear looking at Potter, either, so he leans back on one hand, uses the other to spread the lube he is starting to see the point of behind his balls. Potter sits up, his eyes wide. “You want to?” he asks.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Either way,” Snape says, slipping a finger, then another, into his arse. He wants it done, mostly. Had been foolishly hoping for the magic of the ritual to make it somehow less awkward to be doing this of all things with Potter of all people. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter is kneeling up but his hand has slowed down, and his cock is visibly deflating. Something in Snape is suddenly extremely angry. “You shouldn’t - I - ” Potter stammers.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Well it definitely won’t happen if you can’t even look at me without losing your erection,” Snape says, angry angry red with rage. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“No!” Potter says it too loudly, and he slaps his own hand over his mouth because he knows it. Now they’re both just half-hard and looking at each other. Potter is flushed and squirming but brave enough to try and explain. “I want - I was hoping for it to be good.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“There’s no definition of sex in this grimoire,” Snape says. “We can do literally anything that we consider to be sex.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter nods, clearly deeply embarrassed, but he crawls over to Snape and with a question in his eyes that he doesn’t voice, settles himself astride Snape, on his stomach. He’s closer than he’s been - possibly ever, and Snape settles his hands on his thighs. It makes Potter shiver but he nods and Snape continues. The lube doesn’t get tacky, it stays smooth and warm, and the sensation of Potter’s wet hair under Snape’s slippery palms reignites Snape’s want.  Snape plays with Potter’s foreskin a little, uses his other hand to tease him behind his balls, and all of Potters reactions are exaggerated. Must be the magic. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Snape,” Potter gasps, when he struggles to hold himself up, and Snape gently rolls them over. Potter on his back, wide green eyes staring, picks up his knees and spreads for Severus. He takes fingers so easily, and then stops Snape by sitting up a little. “On your back again?” he asks.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>This time Potter sitting on his stomach feels exciting, no longer unfamiliar, just new, and when he guides himself down, hot and tight and endlessly beautiful, Snape uses one hand to hold himself steady, the other to hold Potter’s cock.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Is this alright?” Snape asks, and when Potter shakes no he immediately lets go of his cock. “Any pain?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“No it’s,” Potter blushes, looks away. “I can’t focus.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape urges him up on his knees a little, then grabs Potter’s cock, and plants his feet firmly to start fucking up into him. Potter comes like a dream, head thrown back, stomach clenching, tight enough to make Severus come too. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>The candles they’d set out around the attic had started hissing and flaring while they were setting up, even more so when they’d started having sex, but now they’ve all extinguished, and somehow it is night time. Potter moves off of Snape gently, but that leaves Snape alone in the dark. He can’t see the ceiling, tries to wiggle his fingers and toes. He can’t.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <em>
    <span>Scream all you want Snape, nobody is coming. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He tries to breathe, tries to look at the ceiling. <em>They’ll never find you</em>. Snape concentrates on thinking <em>lumos</em> and the faint light at the edge of his vision has him realise he’s not alone, someone is talking, not too far away. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>He slams right back into the attic, the centre of the diagram, the ritual with Potter, when Potter touches his hand. Snape sits up, pants. Potter’s hand is still holding his, and it is shaking, so Snape turns to look at him. Pale clammy skin, wide eyes, clutching the grimoire with one hand.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Wanted to see if they warn for this,” Potter explains when he sees where Snape is looking. The floor around them is strewn with pillows, duvets, water bottles, one of those self-vanishing chamber pots they have at St Mungo’s. Snape scowls at that last one, and Potter laughs tremulously. “I’m not eager for that either.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“It seems Granger expected us to stay here for much longer than we’d been anticipating.” Snape pulls Potter in as he says it, stacks pillows around them and covers Potter’s shoulders and lap with duvets. “Here,” he urges, holding out a bottle of juice for Potter.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“What the fuck was that,” Potter says. He looks at himself, at how his hands are still shaking, and touches his cheek where tears are streaming down. “What <em>the fuck</em> is this?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“I had a flashback,” Snape says, because he had mandatory therapy in prison and he remembers some of it sometimes. “I believe you’re suffering from the sex shivers.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter snorts into his juice. “That sounds awful.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“I’m sure there’s different words for it, but I’ve had it after sex that didn’t end the way I was expecting it to, and I know others have described similar experiences.” He’s not going to tell Potter more of his own experience, but he can at least provide some sugars, hydration, and warmth. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Alright,” says Potter, though he’s still frowning. He settles back in, still huddled close to Severus, staring at the glowing spot in the centre of the diagram that appeared while they were having sex, and then perks up. “Wait did it work? Was that it?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape can’t help but laugh, and he throws one of the pillows at the barrier. It bounces back. “That was not ‘it’,” he announces, and Potter doesn’t seem too sad about it at all.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>They have sex again, and Snape discovers the lube tastes alright too. It stains the duvet they’re lying on but surely that’s just to be expected while conducting a sex ritual. While Potter is recovering from coming so hard he gave himself the hiccoughs, Snape tests with two fingers whether he’ll need further warming up. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Oh that’s nice,” Potter groans, stretching as if to feel Snape better. He’s stretched out on the duvet, a pillow under his hips, looking slow and tired and relaxed. “Do you want to do it how we did before?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Please no,” Snape says, shuffling in between Potter’s spread legs on his knees. He leans forward on his hands. “I’m sure that was excellent for you but some of us prefer not to do all the work all the time.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter laughs, as if he knows it’s a lie. He grins from ear to ear, bright eyes sparkling up at Severus when Severus slides in, slick and soft with lube. There’s nowhere to hold, they’re covered from head to toe, and the sex is far slower than Severus would have imagined because of it. But he likes it this way, Potter panting and squirming, taking care not to slide away from each other. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Severus comes first, hadn’t quite intended to, but Potter stacks some pillows behind his head and shoulders which changes the angle, and then he pulls Severus down, and their arms are around each other, their faces right next to each other, and it’s all entirely too much. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter kisses his face sweetly as Severus twitches and gasps, and pants back at him while working one hand between them. He jerks roughly and comes open-mouthed, holding Severus’ face to his own with his free hand.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>They fall down on the duvet together, and Snape covers them both, and then they sleep. </span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Severus wakes up slowly, like he’s covered by something heavy. He is – Potter is draped over him – but the heaviness extends to everywhere. He looks up to check if the golden glow has spread any further and sees it’s reaches the first line of the diagram. Slowly, gently, so as not to wake Potter, he crawls out from the nest they’d made in the centre of the diagram. He reaches out and touches the barrier, still there, just a little wider now. He breathes in and out and decides to make use of the bedpan while Potter is asleep.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>When Severus wakes up again it’s because Potter is tracing up and down his forearm. He stops immediately when he notices that Severus is no longer asleep, and mumbles something. As if their legs aren’t intertwined, as if Snape’s hand isn’t on his stomach, Potter’s hand over it, their fingers interlaced. Severus tries to think of something to mumble something back but finds he is too tired, his muscles ache.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“What do you feel like?” Potter asks, weirdly awkward still.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“A hot bath,” Snape grumbles. “For my life to start. What do you mean what do I feel like?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potter blushes at the ceiling. “I meant sex wise.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “Whatever you like Potter, but it’s your turn to do all the work.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Don’t call me Potter when we’re both naked,” Potter says. “If you can’t call me Harry then nothing at all, but not Potter.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>He doesn’t sound angry, or even resigned or upset, it’s like this is just a request, and he trusts Snape will honour it best he can. Potter isn’t even waiting for a reply, he’s rearranging the duvets and crawling down Snape’s sticky body, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his stomach.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape would like to blame the whole sex magic thing on how hard he is, how fast that was, but the truth is Potter looks good like this. His skin a pleasant contrast to Snape’s paleness, his hair dark and wild, his eyes bright and eager. He starts slowly, just licking at the tip of Snape’s cock, as if he’s trying to figure out what to – <em>oh.</em></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“P- Ha-,” Snape tries. “Wait – is this the...”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Potters face shows nothing, he just pauses and waits for Snape to finish his sentence.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Had you never done this before?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Some of it,” Potter says, going back to kissing Snape wherever he can reach, soft crinkly thighs and thatch hair and sticky skin. “Most of it not. But I’ve been wanting to.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Merlin,” Snape groans, falling back into the pillows. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“I’m happy to tell you about my tragic closeted existence but may I give you a blowjob first?” he says it with a crooked little smile but it brings up something else Snape hadn’t even occurred to ask about. What if Potter hadn’t been queer? He leans back and tries not to think about it. Which is rather easy, in the end, Potter is a quick study.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“We’re almost there,” Potter says, after a lazy too-slow hand job from Snape had him coming an almost pathetically small amount. Snape is making him drink water now.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“We are not,” Snape points out. “We’ve reached the shoes but we still have all the other items to go.”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Why the shoes, anyway?” Potter asks, and there isn’t an answer Snape is willing to give to that. He tries to look for a way to say <em>well they’re the nicest thing I’ve ever owned</em> and <em>they fit me perfectly which means you must have found my measurements in some shop registry because how else could you know</em> and also not give a single thing about his pathetic life away. In the end he stammers his way through something to the effect of ‘I like them very much’ and Potter’s bright happy grin is enough to make him want to cry.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“What about your sock?” Snape asks, only partially in retaliation.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“I found it while moving here,” Potter looks at it, a bit wistfully, they can’t reach it now. “I used it to set Dobby free, the Malfoy’s House-elf. And he saved my life. I’ve been thinking about freedom, and what freedom means when no one thinks you deserve it.” He looks back at Snape, has some more water. It drips down his chin.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>Snape lies back down.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>They get too tired to move much, at some point. Even Potter is sore, and the lube helps Snape still reached a state of overstimulation that is hard to come down from. Every touch sets him off shivering and twitching. Potter jerks away from him until Snape tells him to stop it.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“I don’t want to hurt you,” Potter says. He’s sitting cross-legged by Snape’s hip.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“It’s not painful, it’s just a lot.” Snape looks at Potter through his lashes. It’s not quite light out but he doesn’t know what time or what day it is. It’s become hard to believe anything else in the world beyond this circle he’s drawn on the floor with ash from Potter’s fireplace exists. “Lie down,” he urges. He takes one of Potters feet, the one that had cramped earlier, and starts massaging it. Potter relaxes immediately.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>When Severus’ hands hurt from massaging Potter’s feet, then ankles and calves, he starts licking at his toes. It’s not something he decides to do, and when Potter laughs at the sensation, sits up a little to look at him, he stops. “No?”</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“Not no, just unexpected,” Potter promises, lying back down. He plays idly with Snape’s leg hair, and Snape goes back to sucking on Potter’s toes. When there’s a tug that’s a bit sharp he sits up.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
  <span>“What’s that?” he asks, but he already knows. Potter had been trying to braid his leg hair. It makes him laugh, what a bizarre thing to do, and he’s still clutching Potter’s foot to his chest, lying on his back, laughing, when the golden light that has been building suddenly flares. There’s a loud shattering noise, and then nothing.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first thing Potter did when the ritual was completed was check Snape’s ears. The second thing he did was he started crying.</p><p>“Is there some way to test?” he’d sobbed, while Snape had lead him out of the diagram, down the stairs, into the bathtub. “Some way to be certain?”</p><p>Snape had just managed to get the showerhead to run at an acceptable temperature and pushed Potter’s hair out of his face, kissed the scar that had marked him for death, and reminded him that there’s never any certainty.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>It is spring, and Potter and Snape dance around each other like the excitement of life returning to even the cold hard dirt of Wales is a bit too much for them. They sleep in their own beds, refer to each other as Sn<em>ape</em> and <em>Pot</em>ter and every time they argue Snape thinks of how pretty that pink mouth looks when it’s spit-slick and lube-wet and dripping with everything filthy.</p><p>“You can’t fuck your prisoner, Harry,” he hears Hermione say one day, and he laughs. Potter literally cannot, they tried. “Sorry Snape!” she hollers from the other room.</p><p>It builds as the summer does, and bursts not in May, when Potter comes home a little drunk, a lot early, from a party he hadn’t wanted to be at. It doesn’t burst with Potter’s birthday when the house is overrun with Weasleys and at least six of them want to sit in Snape’s lap and have him read stories to them. It doesn’t burst at the wedding they host in their back garden.</p><p>“I told her I wanted to know how she’d managed to change my birth certificate in three seconds,” Isabelle says while they’re getting drunk on champagne and the smell of flowers all around after the ceremony that only took twenty minutes.</p><p>“No, no, no,” Hermione laughs. “You asked if I’d have to kill you if I told you!”</p><p>“And she said,” Isabelle laughs too, loud and unafraid. “She said no but you’d have to marry me first!”</p><p> </p><p>Isabelle had responded to learning about magic about as well as Snape would’ve thought, at first. “But I’m on a learning curve,” she tells Snape later. “The first time I was this deep in denial about something it took me thirty years to figure it out.”</p><p> </p><p>After the wedding, when they both wake up too early from the sun, and meet in the kitchen and argue over coffee, it doesn’t so much burst as explode. Snape hasn’t been this angry in all his life and he shakes with it, screams out his rage, and Potter gives as good as he gets until he suddenly stills. “What?” Snape whispers. Had Potter heard something? Is anyone coming?</p><p>“I’m not angry at you,” Potter says. He looks small, smaller than he has in years, and Snape knows just what he means. He’s not angry at Potter either. So he steps in close, cups his face with still-trembling hands, and kisses him.</p><p>They stop shouting quite so much after that.</p><p> </p><p>With Snape’s energy returning, he starts helping out with renovating the ancient cottage Potter had apparently bought specifically to be able to house Snape for his house arrest. He can paint now, and though his wand is locked up at the Ministry, he can levitate and summon and even brew.</p><p>At Halloween he looks at himself in the mirror and finds he stands tall, his shoulders are strong, he could do with a haircut.</p><p>“Is it something you never want to do?” Severus asks that night as he sinks into Harry.</p><p>“Not as such,” Harry whispers between them, their lips touching as they move. “I just love it when you fuck me, and I’d hate to do something you don’t like, or something that hurts you.”</p><p>“We’ll give it a go sometime,” Severus promises. He’s picking up speed and Harry curls into it with his whole body, moves as if to find the spot that feels the best like a snake taking in the heat of the sun on a nice flat stone. “We’ll take our time with it, I think you’d enjoy it. But there’s no need if you’re not interested.”</p><p>Harry kisses the top of his head, and pets his hair and comes shaking apart, his eyes on Severus’.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>“Where do you want to go?” Potter asks one night as they’re both sitting under a blanket on the sofa, reading.</p><p><em>Brazil</em>, Snape could say. “Where can I go?” he asks instead.</p><p>“I was thinking,” Potter says, looking up, folding his book closed with the page marked by one of his fingers. “I needed to be here for the house arrest, but if you’d need space and a place to get set up from you’d be welcome to stay here, I do still have Grimmauld Place.”</p><p>Snape sneers at him. It feels a bit strange on his face, as if it’s been too long since he’s last sneered. “I don’t need <em>space</em>.”</p><p>“Well then,” Harry smiles at him. “You’re still welcome to stay. For as long as you like.”</p><p>Severus breathes out and then in, looks around the living room that he’s helped paint. The furniture he’s cleaned and assembled and arranged. “Forward,” he says finally. Because that’s where he wants to go. Harry leans into him for a second, and then picks up his book again. The fire crackles.</p><p> </p>
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